A Good Read

I've been writing this blog since Monday!  I've added, deleted and re-written it.  I've had to change the weather comment so many times!  At the beginning of the week, the BBC weather website said this Saturday and Sunday would be rubbish, then it changed to both days being sunny, now Saturday is here and it's looking relatively sunny  but apparently the rain is back tomorrow!

I want to get out into the garden, continue clearing out the edges of The Field so that I can get to the hedgerows and give it another strim before the winter.......those darn rabbits will be back digging in if I'm not careful and the weeds are creeping around the base of the apple trees. So much to do, so little time (or in this case, so little dry weather!).  My garden isn't directly outside my house, it's actually behind my neighbours house so I can't see it from any of my windows and there are times when I get home too tired to check it.  Then before I know it, it's been a whole week since I've seen it.  So now I'm feeling guilty because I haven't been out in the garden for over a week.  Other things have taken precedence lately and, with the shorter days, by the time I get home from work it's too dark to see what I'm doing.  Like I've said before, I love Autumn - but I start to feel out-of-sorts if I don't get any decent time in the garden, or anywhere outdoors for that matter.

So in the meantime, I've turned to my gardening books for some connection.  On the sunny side (pardon the bad pun) it's provided the opportunity to try and improve my gardening knowledge.  I recently bought a copy of John Seymour's 'The New Self Sufficient Gardener'; first published in 1978. It's a wonderful book; chapters divided into fruit, veg, herbs, seasons, planning, cultivation, preserving and even a miscellaneous section on garden structures, tools and animals. The illustrations are lovely - I don't know why but it's like flicking through an old book from bygone days. I can see I'm going to get a lot of use out of it.  I particularly like his suggestion of having your hens underneath your fruit trees as they eat a lot of the harmful grubs and I'm certainly going to think long and hard about where to build the hen run next year!

There's another book on my shelf which I love to pick up and relax with on the sofa:  The Healing Garden by Romy Rawlings.  It begins with a quote from Thomas D Church:

There are no mysterious 'musts', no set rules, no finger of shame pointed at the gardener who doesn't follow an accepted pattern.  Landscaping is not a complex and difficult art to be practised only by high priests.

It's given me the confidence to just go out and try things in the garden; if they don't work it's on to Plan B (or in some cases C, D and even E!) but when it does work it's a real boost to the Gardener Within.  This book isn't just about plants for aromatherapy (although there is a section about that) or homeopathy; it contains advise and information on:

• Creating a low-allergen garden
• How to Feng shui your garden
• Encouraging wildlife 
• Herbalism
• How to use colour in the garden as therapy (for example orange is the colour of activity, enthusiasm and freedom and complements the colour blue, which promotes relaxation and tranquility)

Not to mention the beautiful photographs. I'd like to try and incorporate some of the ideas from this book into the flower beds in the Field (when I get around to putting them in which probably won't be in the near future) along with some plants suggested in James Wong's book 'Grow Your Own Drugs'.  I quite fancy the idea of growing plants that will help my ice-cold feet warm up in the winter or stop me from spending a fortune in face masks and hand lotions!

My garden needs more in it; that's what will give me more reason to be out in it.  Vegetables, chickens, fruit trees, wildlife pond, fruit bushes, places to sit, views to soak up, wildlife habitats etc are the things that will help me spend more time in it and encourages me now to put those wellies on, grab my coat and hat, unlock the shed and out with those tools!

gardening puts a smile on your face!